University of Alabama

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“Bringing the Globe to Alabama”
The Strode Program is a privately endowed program to promote the study of English literature from Skelton to Milton. The endowment provides for lectures and residencies by distinguished scholars and fellowships for graduate study at the University of Alabama in the field of English Renaissance Literature.

Hudson Strode served on the University of Alabama faculty from 1916 to 1963. He was a prolific author and celebrated teacher of Shakespeare and of creative writing. The Strode program was endowed by Professor Strode and his wife, Thérèse.

Focus: The Graduate Student
The intellectual work and educational activities sponsored by the Strode Program, from fellowships to lecture series, from the Strode Seminar to summer research awards, converge upon a single focus: the graduate student. We have a lively and talented group of students specializing in English Renaissance literature in preparation for careers in colleges and universities, or for other professional or personal goals. The faculty is committed not only to teaching students but also to mentoring them, fostering a community of future scholars.

Our students have won departmental and college awards for teaching and they have won university-wide fellowships for dissertation research. A recent Ph.D. received the College of Arts and Sciences annual award for best dissertation. Topics treated in the dissertations produced by our students are diverse—from readings of Spenser which deploy the theories of Derrida and Lacan to studies of the representation of female sexuality which draw upon seventeenth-century London court records; from adaptations of Shakespeare for teen films to performance criticism of regional and university theatrical productions. Essays written by our students—on Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, on the agency of the letter in Hamlet, on class conflict in Coriolanus, on Leo Africanus and early modern imperialism, and on queer kinship in The Merchant of Venice—have appeared in Early Modern Literary Studies, English Literary History, English Literary Renaissance, Studies in English Literature, and Shakespeare, among other journals and essay collections.

We have an excellent record of placing Ph.D.s in tenure-track professorships. In the past ten years, 100% of our Ph.D. graduates who went on the academic job market eventually landed tenure-track jobs. Recent graduates have joined the faculty at Cornell College, High Point University, Mercer University, Stephen F. Austin State University, Xavier University, and Youngstown State University. M.A. students have matriculated to Ph.D. programs at Emory, Northwestern, Rutgers, University of California, University of Georgia, University of Oxford, University of Tennessee, and University of Washington, to name a few. Other M.A. students have gone on to law school, library school, the Peace Corps, high school teaching, or other opportunities.